I've noticed quite a few people in these forums talking (not really complaining, but maybe gripeing) about strike craft spamming. I looked through old threads, but didn't find anything on this, specificly. So I thought I would start a discussion on strike craft.
Personally, I like strike craft. By late mid-game my main fleet usually has at least 50 squadrons, sometimes as many as 70; most of these are bombers. I find this is a good way to take on star bases, espescially the Vasari SB. The main fleet can avoid the moving starbase while the bombers destroy it.
I know some gamers who frequent multi-player find this tactic annoying. Here is my oppinion.
What is the purpose of strike craft? Strike craft are a cheap and easily replentished means of projecting power beyond the range of the main fleet. So using them in this fashion is, I think, a legitimate tactic. And yes, I have been on the recieveing end of this agains hard and unfair AI's. I play as TEC, and with the new upgrades to gauss turrets and hangar bays, as well as the hangar upgrades for SB (filled out with fighters to counter bombers), massed waves of strike craft can be countered. Not without losses, true, but where is the challenge if you win every single engagement?
Personally I like SC.
Is it very spammable? Yes
But logically this is a very difficult thing to avoid. This is true even in real life. If something works better than something else in battle, spam the hell out of it to win. Admittedly the other side will strive to counter this move, but we need to learn to do this in game as well. There never will be a perfectly balance game (at least I have not found one yet). And when you consider what SC is used for it makes sense anyway.
SC are very well balanced. no one every builds the damn counter.
It's a very legitimate tactic. Air power is one of the main focuses of the military because its strength outweighs the potential for loss. And yes, we 'spam' our enemies. Not that it is foolproof. Israel sought to use superior air power over its enemies in the Yom Kippur War, only to discover they had deployed SAM batteries bought from Russia.
I personally like a strengthened air power. I don't care for the approach of the Mad Scientist mod which makes it dominant, but I enjoyed it in Death from Above and the current Distant Stars mod. I counter it offensively with fleet fighters and defensively with hangar bay flak/fighters.
I like the SC. It makes the game feel more like a space opera, where the capital ships blast eachother while the sky is filed with fighters and bombers duking it out. I like that bombers have a large impact. It gives me cool moments where bombers take out cap ships. Sure, SC are powerful and tend to dominate a fleet. But thats what happens in space operas, and I want Sins to follow that template for how combat should feel.
However, my complant is that cap carriers don't carry the majority of the SC. They should rebalance it so that carriers can hold 20+ SC each, and make Light Carriers a lot easier to kill so that people take Carriers more, using LCs to suppliment the carriers, not the other way around.
From what I have seen, the "cruiser carriers" are like the "Jeep carriers" of WWII. Smaller and carry two (Or three in advent?) squadrons.
The cap carriers are more like the early WWII carriers, just converted battlewagons with a couple squadrons added in. Although here they retained more of their battlewagon firepower.
If you add too many squadrons, they will drastically unbalence play. To make them a "traditional" carrier, you could increase the squadrons to say start at 4 and upgrade to 6 tops, then change the weaponry to defensive flack and light frigate sized weapons.
In terms of American WWII carriers it would basically reduce the weaponary to the quad 40mm's and the 5" deck guns.
Just an interesting side note the Lexington and its sister ship(Saratoga I think) were converted battlecruisers and still kept their orginial 8 inch guns.
Yeah, I think that carrier caps should have pretty weak weapons, patricularly compared to ther cap ships. They should be like modern Aircraft carriers; serving no real purpose but to launch and maintain SC. Any weapon damage should be incidental.
Yes, like you said those were the early converted battle wagons. Later carriers that were not conversions had 5" as their biggest weapons.
I agree that carrier caps should carry more squads, possibly 10-15 rather than the two that they do now. It seems pointless to spend the money on a capitol ship that carries the same number of squads as a light carrier. The abilities are nice in the early game, but aren't really worth it in the late game, at least for the TEC carrier cap.
It would be kind of funny to hear what real military conflicts would have sounded like if soldiers used "gamer terms".
Sailor at Pearl Harbor: The Japanese are spamming us with Strike Craft! It's not fair!
Sailor 2 at Pearl Harbor: They are camping us too! Those cheaters!
ROFL An excelent point.
Fighters aren't as unbalanced as they have been a while back. Flak frigs are able to kill them, and in numbers they can clear the skies nicely. Of course, bombers can hurt them and it's wise to have a few of your own combat fighters to kill bombers along flak... And as others have said, some caps have anti-fighters capabilities that can clear the skies if someone goes heavy on SCs. SCs are part of a normal fleet, they are not optional or just a neat but nearly useless addition like in many games that have them.
I also believe that hangars should have more SCs for defense, right now they are not that great at defending planets when a fleet can have swarm of fighters and pretty much kill anything the hangars can send... Same for carrier capitals, they should hold their own against several light carriers and be able to carry more SCs than any other capitals.
Yes, there also needs to be a balance between what the cap carrier carries and what an SB carries.
If we stay with the naval example from above, a full CV carried 70-90 aircraft, while a "Jeep carrier" carried 24.
In keeping with that we could use 6-9 squads for a CAP carrier. SB's would still be able to provide more SC than a CAP carrier. Increasing the number of SC carried would also need to be offset by reducing the offensive firepower turning and putting into a more traditional role of a carrier as a supporting ship rather than a "Line" ship. (Yes I know carriers are the "Flagship" but they are not 'Line ships' firing their main weapons at enemy cruisers.)
Starcraft came quite close there at the end...
Well, I wish someone would upgrade Death from Above for Entrenchment. That increased the SC of carriers and bays by two fold. Mad Scientist does this too, but with some upgrades necessary and more options as far as fighter types. As for the vanilla game, they looked to the mods for inspiration with graphic updates, why not play with the mods and take ideas from there?
No no no. This has been discussed sooooo many times before. This is a game breaker.
I outfit my carrier cap with 2/3 bombers and the rest fighters and I will kill anything I meet early game (including other caps) without losing my cap as I can kite it around the grav well. And if the other person gets LRMS, then I just switch the balance around some...
There is a reason why the number of squads upgrade with level - it makes you earn the extra ones. You get 3 squads once you get Lvl 2, which should take all of 5 minutes....
Why suggest a change which will force EVERYONE to get that ship as their first cap? It would probably be their second and third as well..... In fact you wouldn't even need cruiser carriers - just spam caps....
I believe that to ballance capship carrier with more squadrons, they need to be slower and weaker than every other capship so using them as their front line vessels would be suicidal. I also think capship base stats should reflect their purpose more (armor, hull, speed, shield strenght, shield charge and hull repair). They currently have some difference but they are very slight, it's mainly their abilities that differenciate them the most.
Well, I am new to the forums and don't have the time to go back over the 150 pages of old threads. Even thought the number of squads upgrades with the levels of the carrier cap, I don't think 5 or 6 squadrons is enough for a true carrier cap. The carrier doesn't have to start out with 10-15 squads, just make the higher levels have more squads so the ship actually feels like a carrier.
There are counters to every tactic, even this one. Even in early game, you can build a few flak frigates to counter enemy SC, build a few light carriers and attack the carrier you say is "kiteing" around the grav well. I don't think adding a few, or even a dozen, squadrons to the carrier cap in mid game would unbalance it in any way. It would simply make the carrier a CARRIER!
A tactic that I have been useing (with tec) with fairly high success: In my fleets I usealy build my strike craft with a 2 fighter to 1 bomber ratio. More fighers to combat enemy fighers and the fact that they are harder to kill than bombers. This ensures that I will have some full squadrons thoughtout the battle. I will then group my bombers together and have them attack the same target at the same time for effectivness (usaly eneamy long range ships), let the fighers do their thing according to the AI (they target bombers first then light ships). All the wile grouping my long range ships as a group, (with some anti-fighter ships too) then the rest of my fleet as the main group with the rest of the support ships to increse thier abbilitys and surviveablity. I keep my long range ships out of the engagment range of the enemy's main battle formation and attacking the hard targets (caps, starbases and other orbital defences). My main group is slugging it out with the enemy main battle formation (taking out any starbases first with my longrange ships, using the main fleet as a shield aginst other ships). Mid to late game I would have around 30 figher squads and 15 bomber squads, and 15 squads of bomers together will take out any longrange ship in mere seconds. My carrier caps produce all bomers because of the (tec) abbility of heavy strike craft, increseing the thier surrviviblilty behind the enemy formations.
In my system defence, I go with a 1 to 1 ratio because with the flak wepons on hangers (entrenchment only) and the gauss weapons produce a good ratio of offencive and defencive power (depending on your setup).
Works for me anyways.
Sawakaki, 10-15 squads even for a maxxed carrier is way too many. A SB can hold what, 16 tops and you are going to give a ship that is far smaller and equal number of squadrons?
If you compare crusier carriers to full CV's 3 times the number of squads a crusier carrier would be optimal.
If that happens you would need to reduce the offensive capabilities.
Personally, if those changes are going to be made for a "true" CV, then have it be a researched ship. Then folks wont get it right off the bat.
I think that cap carriers should start with 4 squads, then max out at 9 at level 10 (+1 squad every 2 levels) I also think that carriers should have very little offinsive firepower aginst most other ships, but be very effective aginst strike craft with much longer flak range than any other ship (better than it allready is). With Tec, take the flak abililty from the kol, give it to the carrier, and give the kol a diffrent battleshipy abililty. I'm thinking a consintrated firepower ability ("Consentrate forword fire power on that target.. CONSENTRATE FORWAR......")
Responding to scootertgm, maybe 10-15 is to many, but I'm not talking that many right away, 3 or 4 to start with, and it levels up from there. Having a carrier that, even fully leveled up carries no more fighters than the same number of light carriers in fleet supply terms (cap ship is 50, LC's are 14 each, each LC carries 2 squadrons, so 14 x 3 = 42 fleet supply for LC's) is a bit dissapointing and counter intuitive. I just think that the carrier in this game behaves more like a low end ship-of-the-line and is a carrier only as an after thought. I also agree when you say it should be a researched ship, maybe around the time when you reasearch the Kodiak HC. Scaling down the carrier's offense weaponry and giving it flak would be a great thing, too. Also, a TEC starbase can hold 14 squadrons, but SB also have MUCH stronger weapons, Huge shields and TONS of armor that ships don't have. I don't think it's a real stretch to imagine a ship with light armor and little offensive weaponry carrying a dozen or more squadrons. All the room is taken up with the strike craft.
In all fairness, though, I am incredibly happy with this game and think it is one of the best designed and balanced game I have played, pretty much ever. No game is going to make absolutely everyone completely happy, though. All I'm doing is adding my two cents worth and seeing what kind of response I get.
hey, these are great debates, in which players get to though in all there 2 cents (and hopfully geting a few bucks worth out of it) were the devs get to see what the players are saying and hopfully come up with a good compermise to add to new updates and expanstions. keep it up bro.
I completely agree. right now CV's are line ships with a couple squadrons on as an afterthought.
"hey, these are great debates, in which players get to though in all there 2 cents (and hopfully geting a few bucks worth out of it) were the devs get to see what the players are saying and hopfully come up with a good compermise to add to new updates and expanstions. keep it up bro."
I agree 100%
Thanks guys. I'm new to the whole forum thing, but I think it's great that the community has a voice in the game. Especially a great game like Sins.
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